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Remember letters? They were good, weren’t they? The thrill of receiving that battered envelope with its longed-for contents  all the better for the wait... Handwritten is a celebration of letter-writing in all its guises, a showcase for the masterpieces we would all write if we had the time and inclination  the perfect thankyou letter, a riotous despatch from a far-flung location, that heartfelt declaration of love. As John O’Connell shows, the best letters have much to teach us  Samuel Richardson’s familiar letters’; Wilfred Owen’s outpourings to his mother; the schoolboy scatology of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin; Churchill and Clementine’s reflections on the colour & jostle of the highway’ they trod together; the sly observational charms of Jane Austen... In this richly entertaining book, O’Connell puts forward a passionate case for the value of letter-writing in a distracted, technology-obsessed world. A properly crafted letter is something to be cherished, an act of exposure which gives shape and meaning to the chaos of life. In the words of John Donne, Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls;/For, thus friends absent speak.’